Don’t use your meat hand to stop hard-hit balls that are batted back at you. If you do you may put an end to your pitching career.
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Early last spring [Yankees pitcher Allen] Russell reached for a hard-hit ball through the box with his nude flipper. He got his hand on the ball and succeeded in retarding its progress, but immediately afterwards he suffered a sharp pain in the first two digits of his pitching hook, which was followed by numbness. Then his hand ...

Thursday, September 14, 2017

The 38-year-old Utley is a famously tough interview, well-known among media members for his unwillingness to say much. Some players and coaches hold court in the clubhouse before games, happy to expound when approached. This isn’t Utley. He has all the joy answering questions of a person giving a deposition.

He admits only sparingly, for instance, that people sometimes talk about him as a future Baseball Hall of Fame candidate.

Ray Caldwell isn’t in jail [in New York] today, but it isn’t the fault of New York fans.

When Caldwell was served with an order for his arrest on a charge of abandoning his wife and their seven-year-old son, the New York club planned to take enough money from the gate receipts of the Boston-New York game to make up his bail of $1,000. They found, however, there were not enough spectators to make the required sum and Ray had to get his bail elsewhere.

“I appreciate it,” Garcia said. “He came over and said it was a tough decision for him and that I was throwing the ball well. But at the end of the day, my job is to execute pitches until they take me out of the game. I thought for the most part I was able to do that today, and the biggest thing is that we won a big game.”

Ulnar nerve transposition surgery means doctors will move a nerve to a spot in Fulmer’s elbow were it is less likely to be irritated. Fulmer has had issues with numbness and tingling in his fingers on and off all season. There is no structural damage in the elbow.

The 3-4 month recovery indicates Fulmer will be ready for spring, though with the Tigers rebuilding, it stands to reason they will be cautious with their prized young arm. The surgery and recovery will undoubtedly change his ...

“I love sushi,” Longoria said. “Sushi is one of my favorite things to eat. I hate when people slather their sushi with Sriracha. I used to do it just after college and I didn’t know how to eat sushi, so it was like, “I’m gonna eat this fish, but I’m just gonna put Sriracha all over it and it’ll taste like Sriracha.”

He continued, “But now you go to these nice places, there’s a place [in New York] that started in Boston ...

Astros right-hander Lance McCullers Jr., who came off the disabled list Wednesday in Seattle in his first start in more than month, was scratched from his scheduled start Wednesday against the Angels with what manager A.J. Hinch called “arm fatigue.”
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“I feel fine,” he said.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Japanese star pitcher/outfielder Shohei Otani has long been on the radar as one of the most talented players on the planet who isn’t already with a MLB organization. He stoked expectations before the season that he might ask his current team — the Nippon Ham Fighters — to make him available to major league clubs through the posting system. Now, reports out of Japan tonight suggest that’s just what will occur.

The Oakland A’s have settled on land near Laney College as their preferred spot for a 35,000-seat, privately financed ballpark to replace the Coliseum, team officials said Tuesday.
“Finally, we’ve got our site,” team President Dave Kaval said of the 13-acre location near downtown, which the A’s selected after also considering the Oakland Coliseum site and land on the waterfront northwest of Jack London Square. “It’s really the strongest location when it comes to private financing, ...

James C. Dunn, president of the Cleveland Americans, protested the game which Umpire Owens forfeited to Chicago last Sunday with the score tied in the tenth inning. Owens forfeited the game because he believed the Cleveland players were making a burlesque out of the contest.

The protest was denied.

The story, as best as I can tell: Cleveland’s Jack Graney was called out, the third out of the tenth inning, for interfering with Chicago third baseman Fred ...